Wednesday, August 02, 2006

Morrison's Restaurant

While in Cape Breton, we stopped at various local restaurants for lunch. One gem we found was Morrison’s, between South Harbour and Cape North. This is a section of the Cabot Trail that moves outside of the park, and gives you the opportunity to fuel up, eat and buy pottery, ice cream, and other tourist requirements.

Morrison’s looks like a big house, and the dining room looks like an old house, with all of the paraphernalia required to survive in the area, 100 years ago, displayed on the walls. There are old logging saws, fishnets, antlers, axeheads, bowls, bottles and quite enough other items to provoke curiosity and respect for our forebears.

The food was excellent. Tony had a salmon fillet sandwich, and I had a chicken breast sandwich. They were on thick sliced homemade bread, spread with homemade herbed butter or mayonnaise, and topped with locally grown red onions, lettuce and flavourful tomatoes, and accompanied with homemade fries. The iced tea- was cold tea. Everything was thick cut, local, and fresh. It was delicious and definitely worth a stop.

The Yellow Cello Café in Baddeck is another eatery we recommend. It was obviously a favourite with the local tourist population, and the prices were reasonable enough that you could probably eat there every day. We had the spinach pizza, with tomatoes and feta. There was probably enough feta on there for two pizzas, but it was tasty and an excellent lunch. We ate on a screen porch and had an excellent view of everyone in the restaurant and everything that was going on in the street too. And there was a lot- Baddeck is the hub for everyone coming to Cape Breton whether they’re going on to the Highlands on the left, or Sydney on the right.

Some of my other favourites from the island worth checking out:The Red Shoe Pub in Mabou is owned by the Rankin sisters and often has live music in the evenings, planned or not. They serve up local classics like chowder and oat cakes. They used to have a line of red shoes hanging at the front of the buiding, but when Tony and I went by, they were all taken down.Lik a Chik is a small shack in Bras D'Or, located across the road from the famous Tim Horton's which had the Jesus image on its brick wall. Think KFC, but homemade, with more pungent (I'm not sure, but it makes me think 'Middle Eastern') seasoning which is applied both to the chicken and the fries. Eat in or out, it's all served in a greasy box.

One of the nice things about Cape Breton is that there are a lot of independently owned eateries. Cape Breton doesn't attract that many franchises, for one thing there just isn't enough people (outside of Sydney) to support anything like that.